Monday, July 17, 2017

In a book
review of Russell Redenbaugh's Shift
the Narrative, John Tamny notes that its author, blinded
during high school, might not have had much of a chance to prosper had
the Americans with Disabilities Act been law shortly after his
graduation:

[B]arriers to Redenbaugh's self-reliant,
working narrative continued to reveal themselves. While his fellow
classmates were inundated with suitors during year two, Redenbaugh
"had forty-nine job interviews and not a single offer." Finally Cooke
& Bieler, a then small investment counseling firm in Philadelphia
made him a Wharton-style hard pitch: they offered him a job while
telling Redenbaugh that "if it doesn't work you'll have to leave." By
the 1970s, Wharton's first blind MBA was the firm's chief investment
officer, partner, and its biggest revenue
producer.

Interesting here is that Redenbaugh notes how the
1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) would have rendered illegal
Cooke & Bieler's conditional offer. Despite that, he laments the
ADA's passage. Redenbaugh believes a principal driver of rising
unemployment for the disabled springs from firms being reluctant to
take risks on them in the first place. It's difficult to hire those
whom it's similarly difficult to fire.

Like countless
unskilled workers who are willing to compete on price and are shut out
of the labor market by minimum wage laws, disabled Americans (and
their potential employers) are being robbed of opportunity by being
legally barred from making themselves more
competitive.

That the government feels the need to stick
its nose into any contractual agreement between consenting
adults (that doesn't violate individual rights) is bad enough. The
fact that it does so in the name of "helping" someone with a
disadvantage -- and makes things worse than they already are -- is an
outrage.

-- CAV

P.S. In the name of
even-handedness, I must acknowledge the following:

[T]he
architectural standardization brought on by ADA requirements, he
mentioned, which tend to put things like door handles (easier to
manipulate than knobs) in rote places, were a boon for unauthorized
entry.

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Another group that has done well under this pernicious Act are lawyers. There is a subset of ambulance chasers who make money by using disabled individuals to shakedown small businesses about their lack of ADA compliance. It is a total scam which bankrupts many of these firms. That article you linked was disturbing. I had no idea ADA requirements have made buildings structurally unsound and easy to break in. YIKES!! Most of all it keeps those with disabilities as perpetual victims, unable to be self-sufficient.

"I had no idea ADA requirements have made buildings structurally unsound and easy to break in."

It also leaves them vulnerable in case of emergencies. Take, for example, fires--to be in compliance with the ADA you can have elevators, which are disabled upon activation of the fire alarm. Which means anyone unable to get down stairs on their own power (such as those in wheelchairs) is trapped in the upper stories in the case of a fire. But no one considers that, since regulation has replaced thought in the construction industry.

If I recall correctly, an elevator is unsafe in a fire, anyway, and their convenience under normal circumstances would see them installed with or without Big Brother issuing marching orders, so I don't see an issue with the ADA here.

This isn't really about elevators; it's about the fact that the ADA is limiting options, and encouraging risky situations. The ADA has limited options for complying with accessibility standards, and the one most places opt for (elevators) demonstrably does not work for the people the ADA ostensibly protects at the one time you really, really need it to.

In other words: The ADA doesn't care if disabled people are actually safe. The regulation actually and demonstrably encourages building practices which put handicapped people at risk.